SEAL Baby Daddy

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, smiling over at her.

Mom grinned back at me. “But you are going to have to have him over for dinner sometime so I can meet him,” she added.

“One thing at a time,” I said, laughing.

I still was worried about how telling Ace the truth would go, but at least I felt a little better about it. Like Mom had said, she had never met Ace before, but she seemed to think that things were going to work out in the end. And I had to hope that she was right.

I remembered the previous night, watching Ace in the kitchen. He’d looked so comfortable there, as though there wasn’t any question that he belonged there. And for a moment, I allowed myself to consider what it would be like if we continued down this path, if everything worked out between the two of us, if he wasn’t upset when he found out that Ava was his. Would we get married? Would we have more kids?

But I couldn’t allow myself to think about that. Just like I’d told Mom, I was afraid of getting my hopes up too high, of being disappointed. Better that I approach the conversation expecting that telling Ace the truth would be the end of our relationship. At least I could stop feeling so guilty about keeping secrets from him.

I just hoped we c

ould work things out.

28

Ace

By Tuesday, I still hadn’t heard from Harper. It was starting to bug me. I wanted to go over to her place again, to bring by more food or come up with some other excuse to see her, but I had to respect that she had told me she would call me once Ava was feeling better.

I wondered if maybe Harper was sick now, too, if that was why she still hadn’t called. But even if she was, I knew her mom was over there to take care of her. I didn’t need to intrude. And I wasn’t sure that I was ready to meet Mrs. Dawson yet either. I’d never met a woman’s parents before. The thought of it wasn’t entirely unpleasant; I just wasn’t exactly sure where Harper and I stood in our relationship. And again, I was trying my best not to scare Harper by taking things too fast.

I went to my therapy meeting feeling more relaxed than I could remember being for one of these things. For the first time, I wasn’t worried that she was going to ask something that I didn’t want to answer. I felt calm and sure of myself.

“You seem like you’re in a good mood today,” Nancy commented.

I shrugged. “It just feels like everything has been working out since I moved back here. I didn’t expect things to feel this good, honestly.”

“I take it things are going well with George, then?” Nancy asked.

“Yeah, they’re going really well,” I told her, smiling. “We’re expecting to get the new training facility up and running really soon. George has found the perfect place for it and had the company sign made up and everything. And he’s got plenty of contacts with the military and the police force. I think we’re going to be busy.”

I was excited about it. But that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to talk about.

Fortunately, Nancy seemed to realize that. “And things with Harper?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. I paused, sheepishly rubbing the back of my neck. “I feel like maybe she thinks I’m moving too fast, but then I have to wonder if maybe the reason I think she’s thinking I’m moving too fast is that I’m just afraid of commitment and looking for some way to not fully commit to her.”

Nancy hummed. “You seem pretty committed to your career,” she pointed out. “Is it just relationships that you have a difficult time committing to?”

“Yeah,” I said, the words coming in a rush. “I didn’t have the best childhood. My mother died when I was really young, and my dad didn’t cope very well. He started drinking a lot.” I paused before admitting the one thing that I’d never told anyone else. “He beat me. My whole childhood. Just for stupid stuff, just when he’d had a bit too much to drink. I hated him.”

Nancy looked surprised for a moment. I knew that I couldn’t be the first person to confess something like that to her. She was probably more shocked to hear me offer the information without her having to draw it out of me. “And that’s how you ended up in the foster care system?”

“It was a little more dramatic than that,” I said wryly. I shook my head and took a deep breath. “One night, I came home from school. I was late. I was working on this project with a friend. I’d tried to call home to let my dad know, but he wasn’t in when I called, and I guess he never checked the answering machine. So when I got there, he was pissed. Wanted to know where I’d been, if I’d been fucking around, that kind of thing. And he started beating me.

“But what he hadn’t counted on was, at that point, I’d hit my growth spurt, and now I was bigger than him. I had the upper hand for the first time.” I grimaced. “I almost killed him. I just kept punching and punching and punching, and he was bleeding, and I knew there was a lot of blood, and after a certain point, he wasn’t even really fighting me back.”

“But you didn’t kill him?” Nancy said as I fell silent.

I stared down at the carpet for a long moment, still thinking back to that night. I could still picture it all so clearly, all these years later. I could practically feel it still, the punches, the blood, the carpet burn on my knee from where I’d fallen when he’d first hit me.

And I could still hear the ambulances. One of the neighbors had heard us fighting and called the police.

“I didn’t kill him,” I said quietly. “I was just sitting there, and I was so angry at him for everything that he’d done. But then something came over me. I just realized he wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail. And I just didn’t know what would happen. Would they consider this to be self-defense? I just didn’t know. So I got up off him and went over and sat on the couch, and that’s how the police found us.”

Nancy nodded but didn’t say anything, letting me choose what I wanted to talk about.